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PXL-Music 2016 --- marketing --- trends

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Arvesta is the biggest full service partner expert for Belgian agriculture and horticulture with more than 250 Aveve stores in Belgium. Arvesta’s business unit Aveve Retail is responsible for these stores. When I arrived, I became member of the Aveve Retail’s Digital Squad. This is a project team of interdisciplinary experts who do small ‘test and learn projects’ to accelerate the digital learning curve of Aveve Retail. One of their projects, is project ‘Cat’. Project ‘Cat’ focuses on young Flemish cat owners (25-45 years old) with the aim to get to know them and attract them to the stores. This project was established by the Digital Squad to help Aveve Retail with their ambition. Aveve wants (1) to lower the average age (of 56 years old) of their current customer base by (2) targeting younger buyers (25-45 years old) which they are currently lacking. An obstacle is that these younger customers are more digital than ever, while Aveve Retail still needs to catch up online. This is why Aveve Retail formulated following project question “Which channels, message content and products attract a younger customer segment (25- to 45-year-old cat owners) and how do we recruit them?”. To manage the project, two subprojects were created within this project ‘Cat’. Subproject one: ‘Evaluate project management’ My main tasks were to participate, evaluate and find initiatives that would help Aveve Retail with this project ‘Cat’ with the goal to improve Aveve Retail’s project management for similar future projects. Advice, such as involving the right members in the project team and choosing the right external partner, is important at the start of the project. During the project it is of great importance to not skip the research phase, (e.g. five interviews provide 85% of the info), the ideation and prototyping phase (low cost, fast testing with users). It is also important to visualise where possible to avoid misunderstandings. Subproject two: ‘Getting to know new customers’ The aim was to understand not regular younger customers (25-45 years old) and define their needs/wants. To get to know these unknown consumers, Aveve Retail needed to involve customers as early as possible to work in a more in a customer centric way. Service design would guide and help them with its tools such as research. Derived from user research, it became clear that Aveve Retail should boost their online presence by providing an user friendly website. They should also use Facebook, Instagram and YouTube for attracting new customers and keep them by targeted and personalised mails, newsletters and loyalty program. Light, credible and useful emotional and functional content showed the best results to attract these customers. Regarding buyer behaviour of these customers, research showed that e-commerce (e.g. delivery at home) is important. In order to attract customers, Aveve should keep focusing on the reasons why people buy at Aveve (1. Convenience, 2. Confidence in the brand and 3. Shopping experience) and tackle the reasons why people do not buy at Aveve (1. Convenience and 2. Aveve is seen as expensive). In addition, initiatives like using samples to promote brands (e.g. house brand) which stress the specialism and using package deals for combining popular with less popular products. More interesting insights and recommendations can be found in this project report.